


Away from Me (The Other Side)

by Arya_Greenleaf



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Female Bucky Barnes, Female Steve Rogers, Multiple Selves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-17
Updated: 2014-07-24
Packaged: 2018-02-09 06:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1971777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arya_Greenleaf/pseuds/Arya_Greenleaf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johann Shmidt was a mad-man, to be sure, but his theories had a nasty habit of proving true. The Norse Gods lived. Their mythical artifacts were here on Earth--Midgard if the mythos was to be followed. The Tesseract had been such a powerful, useful tool. But it was lost now. All hope for the organization, all hope for the continuation of the Red Skull's vision, was balanced precariously on a bit of imprecise science.</p><p>Sergeant Barnes had been a perfect candidate. Strong of mind and body, not easily broken. It had been devastating to the program when he was lost. But there could be a way to regain him without needing to engage Captain America or the Howling Commandos--of this world--in direct combat.</p><p>If Yggdrasil and the Realms were a reality, then why not others as well?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Darling, I Want to Destroy You

He knew that look all too well. He'd seen it in the mirror too many times.

Less often now, certainly, but before? Before he met The Man on the Bridge?

They were one. They were the same. They were a singular entity split between two bodies. He knew exactly what was rolling through her mind.

_The mission. I am The Mission. There is only the mission. Without the mission, I am nothing. I am no one. I am a ghost. I am The Asset. I am death. I am silence. I have fail-saves. I have an out. I had an out. Failure is not an option. Complete the mission. Complete the mission or die. Extraction is not an option. Complete the mission or die._

But there was no more mission. There was only him. There was only her. The mission was void. Mission parameters did not meet pre-programmed drive.

It was his only truth. When The Man on the Bridge suddenly became _Steve,_ and the world shattered around him. When he learned he was not only The Asset. When he remembered. When he'd experienced cognitive recalibration, as Natalia called it.

But that wasn't an option for her.

The Man on the Bridge had called him Bucky. But what was she called? Who was she?

They were one. They were the same. They were a singular entity split between two bodies. He knew exactly what was rolling around in her mind.

Her cheeks had sunken, eyes hollowed, skin greyed with mal-nutrition and grime. Short, brown hair was greasy and matted, clearly untended. As the soft breeze blew through the night, he caught a whiff of her. She circled him like a predator. Ready to spring forward or back on the balls of her feet, blade gripped in her right hand. The gears hidden behind the sleek metal plates, their shine dulled by days--weeks? months?--on the street, clicked and whirred minutely as she shifted the position of her arm, ready to move her balance from one side to the other.

She was on a hair-trigger.

"сестра," he said softly. He edged closer to her, allowing her to keep the mouth of the alley, to retain the option to run. "Put the knife down. I'm not here to hurt you."

"Bullshit, брат." Her voice was rough, seemingly from disuse.

"I just want to help."

"I do not need your help." Her lips curled up into an ugly snarl. She lunged forward, a feint to one side and a strike to the other. He matched her strike-for-strike until they were breathless. Someone in an upper-floor window shouted that they were going to call the police if those damned hooligans didn't knock it the fuck off.

"I'm not going to fight you." He put his hands up in surrender. She remained poised. "You have a choice now, сестра. _We_ have a choice. Come with me. There are people who--"

"There are people who will snatch me from my bed. There are people who will do terrible things to me. There are people who will tear me away from my life. I know things. I know many things." Her resolve wavered for a nearly imperceptible moment before her gaze steeled once again. "I do not know what they mean. But I will not let those things happen again. I will not let them take me away again."

Bucky shook his head. "That's not what's going to happen. The man...the man on the bridge. I know him. He..." Bucky felt guilty that somehow his world was fitting back together, piece by piece, while her's seemed to be breaking into ever tinier shards. They were out there, he knew that. HYDRA. The men and women who had created them. Brought them other. Turned them into the silent, efficient machine of destruction that they were together. He had nightmares that they would find him, take him back, wipe everything away in a blinding jolt of electricity through his brain and down his spine. But he knew he was safe with Steve, even if his memories were still fuzzy at best, he knew he was safe. It was the only thing he was sure about. "He is no longer the mission. He is an ally...a friend."

She looked at him seriously, as if considering following him. She slipped the knife back into her boot. She bolted.

Bucky ran after her. She was gone.

They were one. They were the same. They were a singular entity split between two bodies. He knew exactly what was rolling around in her mind.

He would find her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So here it it, a short preview of what's to come. I hope you all enjoy the premise, I'm really excited about writing it.
> 
> Bucky calls the woman in question "sestra," the Russian word for sister. The woman calls Bucky "brat," or brother. If this is incorrect, please do let me know.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback. The next chapter will certainly be longer, though it may not be up for a little while. I have to work out the kinks and I'm still actively working on my other WIPs.


	2. The Dogs of War

"You have failed!" Schmidt’s face, already frightening, contorted with his fury. Zola didn't think it reasonable to consider the loss of Sergeant Barnes a failure on his part. His job had been to protect the research, the program, to be sure. But, he couldn't have been expected to fight off that giant brute to secure the Asset. Not at all. But Schmidt had to blame the loss on someone and Zola seemed to be the only man willing enough to get close.

"It is not a total failure. We've seen that the science works. It may be reproducible, if we can find another suitable candidate."

"And where do you expect to find  _another suitable candidate_ , Doctor, hmm?" He clasped his hands behind his back and paced across the room. "How many did you go through before? How many?  _Dozens_. All failures. I have time nor patience for you to repeat your mistakes."

"But we know now what optimal conditions are. It will be easier this time."

"No!" Schmidt snarled. "Find him. Bring him back. Complete your work."

There was no way that was going to be possible. It had been a few weeks. There were reports of Captain America and his Howling Commandos taking down outposts and bases. The group seemed to include a man that fit Sergeant Barnes' general description. The two had seemed close; to know each other at least, in those last moments on the walkway before Schmidt and Zola left them to perish in the impending explosion. It would have been better if they had just died.

Schmidt stormed out of the makeshift office that Zola had claimed at the new compound, slamming the door behind him. He was right, of course. Finding Sergeant Barnes and bringing him back to complete the experiment would be the most reasonable route. It would mean that he did not have to start from scratch once again. Zola had managed to save his most important notes and several vials of the serum he was developing. Bringing the American back would serve to further prove his work more reliable, truer, and more _important_ than Abraham Erksine’s. He spat on the floor at the thought of the name, smiled a little remembering the man was dead. Zola wasn’t out to create the perfect soldier, the perfect specimen of manhood. He had no interest in whatever it was that Erksine had deemed made Rogers the perfect candidate. He’d seen the files that their agents had copied or intercepted. The man was a waif. Sickly. Very possibly not right in the head. So what if he was so _good_. What did that matter?

Zola was not interested in recreating Captain America, nor was he interested in placing a man in the same _condition_ as Schmidt. No. He was interested in something far more revolutionary. He would create the perfect machine. A machine that did not need to be soldered or rewired or tuned up or serviced. A machine that would carry out orders rather than rely on programming or an operator. A machine that could learn and grow and become more perfect with each exercise.

The American was too valuable to allow to remain at large.

It had been something about the way Sergeant Barnes carried himself. The way he looked the HYDRA agents in the eye—or the approximation of where their eyes would be since they never removed those ridiculous helmets. The way he allowed his body to be abused even while he remained defiant.

It had been a beautiful thing when he was finally on the verge of breaking. They had placed him back into the cell with that awful man with the bowler and the rest of that…troublesome group. He had instructed the agent who returned Barnes to extract another, it didn’t matter which one, he just wanted to gauge reactions. The agent had seized one of them and Barnes, even after having been through a full day of electro-shock and transfusions and questioning, seized the agent. It had ended in a snapped neck and silence from the men around him. Zola had Barnes moved to solitary confinement before the body was even removed from the door of the cell.

It was like a game after that. After several days in solitary, no food, minimal water, Barnes was teetering on the edge. He’d slept very little. He was irritable. He was beginning to hallucinate.

It was glorious.

Repeated sessions in quick succession left him babbling his name, rank and serial number. Just once, he’d gotten him to waver, to answer the question: who are you? with, “No one.” Another jolt of electricity undid the progress. Shortly after, Rogers compromised everything.

Compromised. Potentially, though, the work wasn’t completely lost.

All reports from the field indicated that Barnes remained somewhat alienated from the rest of his team. It would be reasonable to think that was a side effect of being left constantly on the perimeter, constantly in isolation as the team’s sniper. Zola liked to think that some of his… _programming_ …had remained intact.

Fetching back Barnes would have to be saved for an opportune moment. Zola needed something else to focus on. Schmidt had taken to alternately berating him for both losing the Asset and harassing him to put new and more powerful weapons designs into production utilizing ever-higher energy levels from the Tesseract.

Schmidt had even gone as far as kidnapping and hauling in some poor fool from Norway to retell as much of the mythos surrounding the cube as possible. When the man could provide no further information, he was eliminated. As far as Zola understood, the Tesseract provided energy and power, but may also serve to transfer or channel the same. It struck him that if the artifact’s energy could be harnessed and channeled toward a specific point, it may be able to manipulate matter; perhaps the Tesseract could be the answer to the alchemist’s question.

It had been difficult to orchestrate. Both texts were long out of print and woefully American, but Zola had managed to get his hands on them. The woman’s work in quantum physics and trans-dimensional travel was interesting, to say the least. But what of these barriers? Zola had the power of the gods available to him. Surely, he could utilize it to create his own rips in reality.

It would be revolutionary. It would take Arnim Zola to the absolute top of the scientific community. He would be a god among men. He would no longer need Schmidt to fund him. He would no longer need to submit to his increasingly unreasonable will. He would leave HYDRA and all of its trappings in the dust.

With the power of the Tesseract and the ability to bend reality, to break through the walls that separated the realms…

Perhaps, Yggdrasil was not the only World Tree. Perhaps there were not only Nine Realms. Perhaps, on the other side of the wall between this room and some other, there was another Arnim Zola working toward the same goals.

Certainly, if the gods of the Vikings were real, then possibilities were endless.

Perhaps, on the other side, there would be another Sergeant Barnes.

And wouldn't _that_ be useful?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little shout-out to Rosalind Lutece and her scientific work in BioShock Infinite. I'm not currently playing, but there's always a lot of really wonderful fan art of her and Robert on my dashboard and they are partly an inspiration for this story.
> 
> No direct interaction with Bucky yet, but we'll get there.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


	3. Behind Blue Eyes

"I'm, ah, I'm kinda tired." Bucky raked his fingers though his hair. "I think I'm gonna head back." They were somewhere in the south of France, just below the occupied zone. They'd found a bar that was still open and had taken over one of the tables in the corner. Bucky couldn't bring himself to join in the celebration. They'd done good work, made it out of the skirmish alive and intact, taken out a HYDRA outpost, captured some more of the weird guns and explosives they were using for Stark to study. They'd done good.

But he still felt hollow. It had been weeks since Steve had come and rescued him. It had been weeks since he'd been strapped to an operating table and subjected to Zola's experimenting. He didn't understand what the purpose of it all was. It felt like the squat little man with his beady little eyes and fat little cheeks had just been playing with him. He spent so much time giggling and grinning and jotting things feverishly into his notebooks that Bucky thought it was all just purely for Zola's entertainment. A month of picking him to pieces. Running blinding currents through his head. Shouting questions at him. Working those grubby little fingers into his brain and rooting around and shoving other things in there. All to satisfy Zola's boredom.

A month of jeering and nervous laughter when he was shoved back into the cell in varying states of undone. A month of bruised ribs. A month of throat raw from screaming. A month of stinking out of piss--when he had the capacity since they didn't seem too concerned with keeping the captives well hydrated--because the electricity they pumped into him made him loose control of his own goddamned body. A month of being terrified that each moment might be his last. A month of guilt that he wouldn't see the end of the war, that he wouldn't get back to Steve, that Steve wouldn't be able to keep up the rent or feed himself. A month of being twitchy and jittery. A month of starving. A month of listening to that high-pitched giggle. A month of being endlessly jabbed with needles and waiting to have one bad reaction or another to whatever the fuck it was that Zola was pumping him up with.

He never blamed the men he was jailed with for their laughter or jabs or comments. It was a defense mechanism. He knew that. It was relief that it was someone other than them who was getting worked over. It was armor. If he were honest with himself, he would probably be acting the same way in their position.

It didn't stop them from defending him when some HYDRA goon came to take him back. Didn't stop them from knocking one of the black-helmeted gremlins on his ass when he shoved Bucky just a little too hard back into the cell. Didn't stop Bucky from taking a life with his own hands when they took an interest in the others.

His fingers still trembled with the thought of it. Shooting a man was one thing. Lobbing a grenade at a man was one thing. Ending someone's life with your own bare hands was another. To feel the instant their life ended. To hear the last ragged breath with your fingers wrapped around their throat. To feel the snap against your palms when you broke their neck.

It was days of agonizing silence after that. Days he could only measure by the predictable pattern of footsteps beyond the door. Even still, he lost count. Agonizing, not because Bucky found himself alone in a dark room, but because he didn't know what was happening to the others--what was happening to the men who had become his brothers in more ways that mattered far more than blood. He was sure this was punishment for killing the guard. Positive. The door opened at irregular intervals, a canteen shoved inside. He would open it, sniff it. In the darkness he couldn't see exactly what the liquid it contained looked like. The first few times, he refused it, sure they were going to poison him. Left alone with his thoughts, he realized how foolish the theory was. Why spend the time locking him away to poison him in retribution for the guard, for his insolence, when it would have been easier to shoot him on the spot? When they could make him a spectacle and an example. Of course, it could have been just further evidence of Zola's inhumanity. Eventually, unable to ignore his burning belly and pounding head any longer and on the brink of passing out and staying out, Bucky took the canteen and drained it. It appeared a few more times before the door opened fully for the first time since he'd been shoved inside.

They yelled at him in heavily accented English through their helmets to get the fuck up. He tried. He tried  _so_  hard. But it wasn't in him. They seemed annoyed when they approached to slap cuffs onto his wrists and haul him up. They ordered him to move. Miraculously, though slowly, his feet allowed themselves to be dragged across the floor in some semblance of forward motion. The light beyond his dark little cave was too bright. The movement was too fast. He swayed. His stomach lurched. He was vaguely aware that he was being dragged across the oversized room filled with circular cells. "Head up, Sarge!" Bucky swiveled his head toward the sound of Jones' voice; the Private was grinning wide laughing as the guard behind Bucky smacked the bars between them with a baton. Bucky drew in a breath and set his jaw, concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, letting the sound of Morita's whooping and Dougan's booming laugh soak into him. Relishing in the fevered, angry German being spat out on either side of him and behind.

He kept his jaw clenched and his fists curled tight as they unshackled him, as they shoved him toward the table, as they strapped him down. The sound of his careful breathing filled the room when they left.

"And how are you feeling today, Sergeant Barnes?"

"Sergeant James Barnes, 32557..."

Zola continued to speak over him. "I have to admit, I was beginning to worry. You were having quite the animated conversation with yourself. Shouting at the walls, listening to the floor, trying to peek under the door. I must know: Who is Steve? It sounded like he was rather important. Is he here? Or is he with Rebecca in Brooklyn?"

"Sergeant James Barnes! Three! Two! Five! Five! Seven!" Bucky tried to drown out the sound of Zola's voice with his own as the doctor--was he even a real doctor?--pulled the device hanging over him down on groaning hinges and fastened the headset around his head. Bucky thrashed as hard as his bindings and lack of strength would allow, trying to make things as difficult for Zola as he could. He shook his head wildly, knocking the headset off, finding it difficult to not grin when it skittered across the floor. Zola made an annoyed sound and snapped his fingers several times as if trying to call a dog to him.

"Hold him still." He spoke through gritted teeth as he snatched the headset out of the approaching agent's hands. Bucky refused to look away when gloved hands pressed his head down onto the table to make things easier for Zola. He refused to look away when gloved fingers pinched his nose closed and gripped his chin hard, prying his jaw open. He refused to look away as Zola shoved a block of rubber in his mouth. "Spit it out and lose your tongue, you worthless dog." He knew he wasn't worthless. They wouldn't keep bringing him here if he was worthless, they would have just killed him.

He wished they had killed him. He didn't get any warning before white-hot pulses of electricity shot through him again and again. His body strained against its bindings. Tears sprung to his eyes. His legs grew warm and wet. He tried desperately to hold the sound inside of him, ashamed of himself as he screamed around the rubber block, saliva running out of the corners of his mouth around it.

Zola motioned to the agent and the block was removed roughly. "Who are you?"

He ran his tongue out over his lips, took a halting breath. "Sergeant James Barnes. Three--"

He was backhanded. His mouth flooded with the tangy taste of his own blood as the inside of his cheek broke against his teeth. "Incorrect. You are no one. You are nothing." He wasn't sure if it lasted for hours or days or weeks. He lost track of time. Lost track of what was real. "I'm no one," he sobbed. "I'm no one." At some point, they stopped shoving the block in his mouth. Stopped shocking him. He started to recuperate. They'd injected him with something that made him feel like his body was burning from the inside out and freezing all at the same time. After the initial shock of sensation, he started to feel better. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out.

Eventually, he realized he was alone. No one was there to tell him he was wrong when he said, "Sergeant James Barnes. Three-two..."

"Bucky!" He tried to swim through the murk in his head toward the sound of his name. "It's me! It's Steve!"

No. "Steve?" This wasn't him. This wasn't his little friend. His brother. The pint-sized troublemaker who kept him on his toes and forced him to question everything and anything. The spitfire who refused to back down from a fight.

"Come on!" This man who claimed to be Steve was hauling him up off the table. The world dipped and spun. He was going to be sick.

He swallowed it down. "Steve." He weighed the name on his tongue, trying to make it fit where he knew it didn't.

"I thought you were dead." Was he?

"I thought you were smaller."

Bucky still felt himself questioning if this big man actually was Steve. He sounded like Steve, mostly. His eyes were the same—that soulful, sad, older-than-my-years quality that he’d had since they were pint-sized and running dirty and barefoot through their neighborhood, much to their mothers’ chagrin. But he didn’t move like Steve. He didn’t have that slightly off kilter stride or that little curve to his spine. His ears fit his head. So did his nose. His hair didn’t flop in his face. His hands were like baseball gloves instead of delicate and bony. He kept making comments about how much more color there was, that things weren’t just muddy shades of brown and blue, and how much better he could hear and see. How the whole world had just come completely alive and he couldn’t wait to get home and submit new work to Timely, how the first thing he was going to buy with his Army pay was a brand new set of colored pencils and paints. “Yeah, ya can see someone get shot in fucking Technicolor now. Guts as red as Dorothy’s g’dammed shoes.” He’d shut up after that. Bucky was glad he did, because even though his voice sounded like Steve, none of the same quality was there. All of the Brooklyn, all of that essential Steve-ness of speech, was gone. He’d been ashamed when this new Steve’s face fell and the color drained from it, remained silent the rest of the evening.

“What did they do to you?”

“I think I should be askin’ ya the same thing.”

“Bucky, you don’t understand. Dr. Erksine—“

“I don’t really give a fuck, Steve. Ya were supposed ta stay home. Ya were supposed ta stay safe.” Steve’s face grew red with frustration. “How’m I suppose’ta protect you if yer over here runnin’ inta enemy bases by yerself and blowin’ shit up and jumpin’ out of planes?”

“Buck, I don’t need you to protect me.”

“But it’s _my job_.” He didn’t know what his purpose was supposed to be without having to protect Steve of pull him out of fights with bullies twice his size. His place in the world had been pulled out from underneath him. He was a provider. He’d always been a provider. For his family. His sister. Steve. He worked his fingers raw and his back sore. He put the hope of trying to scrape money together for college aside. He hid his terror at being drafted—denied that it had happened, claimed he’d volunteered to keep Steve from fussing and Rebecca from coming home from school. He did everything for them. What was he supposed to do when they didn’t need him?

“Bucky—“

“No, Steve.” He turned away, stared into their modest campfire. “I think you were the one who kept all the stupid, I didn’t take it with me.”

That was how he found himself ducking out the door of the bar into the night, getting away while Steve excused himself to use the bathroom. The big man couldn’t seem to get a good buzz going. Bucky could remember when one stiff drink had him flat on his ass and needing to be carried back to their two-room apartment near the dock.

“You alright, Barnes?” He smiled weakly and nodded at Falsworth. He was tired, it wasn’t a lie. He just wanted to make his way back to the boarding house that had given them quarter for the night after Dernier explained who they were. Word was spreading quickly about the Howling Commandos and the man wrapped in the American flag storming through the region, helping to liberate those occupied by the strange German forces with their shiny black helmets and frightening weapons.

All he wanted to do was to fall into the narrow bed he’d claimed for himself and try to sleep through the night.

As he walked down the dirt lane from the bar to the boarding house, he offered up a silent prayer that he wouldn’t dream of shocks and sticks and shouts and slaps.

***

Steve had never felt guilty about having accepted Erksine’s offer to participate in the Strategic Scientific Reserve’s program. He felt like he was finally being allowed to be worth something. To do his part. Something more than selling papers on the corner with fantastic and devastating headlines. Something more than collecting scrap metal. Something more. Something meaningful.

Even on the bond tour, he’d felt proud—once he got over the initial awkwardness of being thrust out on stage in a pair of tights with ridiculous little wings on the sides of his head. Bond sales rocketed wherever he went. Even if he wasn’t fighting, he was contributing. He wasn’t doing what Erksine had intended, but he was damned well going to make the best of it.

The first pangs of shame came when they sent him out to entertain the fighting men across Europe. It was the same at every base. Rations and rotten vegetables hurled at him like baseballs. He’d spend hours sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tent they’d set up to house all the props and costumes, trying to scrub the stains and stink out of his costume and scraping the grime off of his shield. He was a joke. He was a mockery of everything these men actually were.

“Well, You’ve got two choices, kid. You keep goin’. You keep bein’ Captain America. Or, you head back to the States. Help out the mad scientists tryin’ to figure what Abraham did.”

A dancing monkey or a lab rat. Excellent choices.

When Agent Carter had mentioned that he’d been heckled off stage by the remnants of the 107th, boys and men from his city, his home, his heart had dropped. When he learned that the rest were dead, injured, or captured his mind had raced. Where was Bucky? Steve hadn’t seen his face in the crowd. A quick turn through the medical tent turned out fruitless. “The name sounds familiar.” Steve wasn’t sure if Phillips knew what a barb those words were, wasn’t sure if the man jaded by war truly grasped everything behind the fact that Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes was gone. He had a job and a family and a sweetheart back home that were going to miss him. That might not be able to carry on without him. But more immediate, the familiarity of the name meant that Steve had lost everything, that he was finally truly alone in the world.

Steve had never been so happy—not even the day he was accepted to art school or the day he sold his first illustration—than the moment he heard Bucky mumbling his name, rank, and serial number.

It wasn’t lost on him that the three-two meant his best friend had been lying to him.

But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered but the fact that Bucky was alive and that they’d made it out of Schmidt’s facility in once piece and they were going back to base.

But Bucky wasn’t the same.

He wasn’t any more the same man who walked away from the recruitment center at Modern Marvels than Steve was the man who’d walked into it.

And it was terrifying.

“Give ‘im time,” they said. The Commandos knew this Bucky better. They’d fought with him. Been imprisoned with him. Formed some kind of bond that was beyond sacred. Steve didn’t kid himself for a moment that the reason they’d agreed to become his team wasn’t because of Bucky. They had nothing invested in Steve. Bucky was the glue that was holding them all together, motivating them to fight.

He just wasn’t sure how much time it wouldn’t take. Bucky refused to talk about the things that happened in that room at the HYDRA base, the things that Zola did to him, the things that made him groan and yelp and thrash in his sleep.

“Give ‘im time,” they said. What they left unsaid was more disheartening, “You haven’t faced the horrors of war. You haven’t lain on your belly in a muddy trench with a tank coming straight at you. You haven’t stared down the barrel of an enemy gun filled with weird blue light instead of bullets. You haven’t lived and breathed this fight.”

But Bucky had.

So when he slipped out of the bar and down the dirt lane, Steve let him go. He said a silent prayer that Bucky would find rest in the narrow bed he’d claimed for himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As in my other works featuring Bucky's return from being a prisoner, he's not adjusting well. I've discussed my theories on what exactly Zola was doing in lots of other places, so I won't rehash it again here and bore you all. I'll just summarize and say that I think it involved both biological/medical/drug experimentation in attempt to recreate the serum that went on to create Steve's fancy new body rather than the unfinished one that made the Red Skull, as well as psychological experimentation including sensory deprivation/sleep deprivation/electroshock/general verbal abuse. Basically, I can see Zola priming Bucky to become the Winter Solider before it was even a real possibility or solid idea.
> 
> I've also discussed Steve's ailments at length, especially in my Steve/Bucky series for the OTP Challenge.
> 
> Some historical notes, because I always seem to include something that could use a reference:  
> Technicolor was the most prominent coloring process in Hollywood movies during the years sandwiching WWII, about 1920ish to 1950ish. Examples that feature heavily in rich, saturated colors like red can be seen in _The Wizard of Oz_ and _Snow White & the Seven Dwarves_, both movies that Steve and Bucky probably would have seen.
> 
> As I've mentioned before, Timely is the original name for the publications company that would give birth to Marvel as it was founded in the 30's. A common thread in most of my stories is that Steve wants to work for them as a colorist or inker during/after he attends art school immediately before the war.
> 
> The beginning of Bucky's serial number indicates both that he's from New York and that he was drafted rather than a volunteer. It's my own sort of headcanon that Bucky might have did the initial orders from Steve both due to his own fear about being sent into war and to divert or lessen Steve's manic determination and insult over repeatedly being classified as unfit for service.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback!


	4. Fight Like a Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> June Barnes and Cora Rogers were best friends. Sisters. Inseparable. But, the War would prove to be a force neither had anticipated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, you'll notice in this chapter that I took some liberties with June's job and such. I've found it hard to find solid information about the WAC and with the added layer of utilizing the Strategic Scientific Reserve as a plot device, it was pretty easy to make the decision to modify whatever history I couldn't nail down to suit my purposes rather than completely scrap what I'd written. Hope you guys enjoy it, either way!

"Cora, I told ya this was an awful idea. I told ya and ya refused to listen. Like always." June tutted and ushered her petite friend into the bathroom of the brownstone apartment they rented. Every evening she came home complaining of a splitting headache, raw fingers, and an aching back.

"It's a job, Bucky." Hardly anyone actually called June by her given name. She couldn’t remember why it had even started, but once Cora had dubbed her “Bucky”—a shortened form of June’s mother’s family name—it had stuck. The only people who called her June were her parents and Cora when she was spittin’ mad. Cora allowed June to rub Vaseline over her hands. "A job that's helpin' pay the rent and put food in the chiller." And cover her ever-mounting medical bills, but that was something always left unspoken.

"And ya know I told ya that ya didn't have to worry about that. I make enough. We could'a stayed in the old neighborhood. You could'a focused on your art."

"I'm never going to make it as an artist."

"But ya just illustrated that sweet little book. How is that not makin' it?"

"I don't want ta illustrate _sweet little books_." She snatched her hands back. "Ya might as well have done it, anyway, with how of'en ya had to tell me what the hell I was usin'. Color's getting worse."

"If ya weren't hunched over a damned sewing machine all day--"

"I'm making flags, June. Flags. For the Navy. I'm doing somethin'  _important_."

"You don't need to let yourself be cooped up at the Navy Yard to do something important, Cora. Illustrating children's books is just as important."

"How the hell is that important?"

"Kids need something to look forward to. Some kind of...I don't know. Escape. Everyone needs an escape." Cora huffed and frowned. "Ya tried to sign up again, didn't ya? That's why ya missed dinner. Where'd ya claim to be from this time?" Cora had been trying to sign up for the WACs.

"I can't be a nurse like mam," she'd said. "But I want to do something important. I want ta contribute. I can't be a mech'nic. I can't be a riveter. I can't be a tech. But I can answer phones. I can do deskwork. I can do _important_  work." The recruiters took one look at her and turned her away. Evidently, fitness was as important for the WAC as it was for the Army. It didn't help Cora's feelings of inadequacy that June had been working at the Navy Yard practically since they started taking women. She’d quit her job at the shipping company and marched into the office at the Yard, declaring herself hirable and wanting to know when she could start. She’d wanted to join the WAC herself, wanted to use the opportunity to see more of the world than Brooklyn had to offer. Cora was constantly beating herself up for holding June back, especially after overhearing her speaking to her girlfriends from the Yard. “No, I can’t. I can’t leave Cora behind like that.”

She'd always been the more fit, the more vital of the two. People treated Cora like a child. Too sickly. Too petite. Asthmatic. Not quite right. Heart problems. And an attitude that June was pretty sure would have frightened even the most war-hardened Fritz. She was a manic little spitfire. Constantly in trouble. Always made to write lines in school for talking back and not conducting herself in a lady-like manner. All of it had only served to make the little fairly-like creature with her too-big ears and her hair the color of honey from June's neighborhood all the more interesting and endearing. A year apart, and a world away in terms of economic status, they'd been fast friends from the moment they'd met in the schoolyard.

Cora had sat up in their shared bedroom half the night, inconsolable after being rejected by WAC the first time. "You have to promise me, Junebug."

"Promise ya what?" June wiped a tear away from her red, puffy face.

"Promise me you won't volunteer to go over there. I don't know what I'd do if ya went over there." June pulled her close. Cora seemed to attempt to disappear into June's flesh, her spindly fingers gripping tight at the back of June's nightshirt. As devastated as she was, as much as she couldn’t fathom the idea of being away from June, Cora knew she had to let go. If she was feeling this way, how must her Junebug feel? If joining up was going to let her see the world, then she had to go. Cora could live through her. She’d write a letter every day that June was away. Heck, maybe she’d convince the WAC to let her join too. They’d have to wear down eventually, right?

They'd sent her off for basic training shortly after that. She'd gone through much of the same hell that the boys who took June and Cora out on doubles complained of. Running, crawling, climbing. She'd even learned to shoot a gun--she was a damned good shot and damned proud of it. She'd quickly moved up the ranks until she was Corporal June Buchanan Barnes of the Women's Army Corps. Turned out, she wouldn’t be seeing the world just yet. June found herself being sent back to Brooklyn to work for some new branch, the Strategic Scientific Reserve. The SSR needed the best of the best, she was told. People who were smart, had the right attitude, aside from being good soldiers—and they weren’t hesitating to take on women. June had never thought of herself as “the best of the best” but she’d take it. It let her stay close to Cora, to live at home rather than on a base, and still be a part of something bigger. At least if she was going to be stuck stateside, she wouldn’t have to live on base.

When she got back to New York for her assignment, she discovered Cora had made herself busy harassing everyone and anyone who would listen to her at the Navy yard and had ended up with a job in the flag loft. The work was tedious, it was wrecking her eyesight even further, if that was physically possible, but the pay was great. And Cora felt needed, useful.

She pulled Cora into back out into the kitchen and made her sit at the table. "C'mon. Eat somethin'. You'll feel bett'ah."

"I can't, Buck. My ulcers."

"Bullshit. Eat." She reluctantly picked at the plate June placed in front of her.

"I've got somethin' I need ta tell ya, Cor." She dropped the bit of cheese she'd picked up. Her hands hovered over the plate. Her spine stiffened. Her jaw set. "Yer not gonna' like it. But I had ta do it."

"You promised."

"I know I did. Ya think I don't remember?" June couldn't take the betrayal etched across her best friend's face.

"But you promised." That was always how she knew Cora was upset--all the Brooklyn went out of her at once, every syllable perfectly enunciated.

"They pulled us into the CO's office and said someone had to go. The other gals were terrified. White as ghosts. So, I took the job.”

"You have a family to help support. Or did you forget about Robert? Did you forget about making sure he stayed in school?" June knew what was being left unsaid: Did you forget about  _me?_

"Of course I didn't forget. It's a bump up in pay! I'll be a Sergeant. I'll be able to send more home." Cora rose from the table and stalked toward the bedroom, her heels clicking against the floor loudly, ticking off the steps of her slightly off-kilter stride. "Cora! Stop it!" She hurried across the room after her, quickly closing the space with her longer stride. "Co--" The bedroom door slammed.

There wasn’t an exact date when she would be shipping out yet, just a lot of hurry up and wait. She’d be going over on the Queen Mary. The boat had become a bus back and forth across the Atlantic, docking in Scotland, for the American troops. From there, she would travel on to the SSR’s post in London. June chattered to Cora about what her assignment was. “They don’t tell any of us a lot ‘a tha specifics. There’s this doc, I swear he’s German—real thick accent—but when ya ask ‘im he says Queens. No matter though, real smart, nice guy. Seems ta have some kind’a chip on ‘is shoulder? I don’t know. Had a fallin’ out of some kind with Fritz so now he’s workin’ fer us.” Cora rarely looked interested. She very purposefully ate in silence. She took care of her raw flag-making fingers on her own. Pulled away when June tried to help her up the stairs or with a zipper or buttons June knew she would have trouble managing. “He’s workin’ on some secret project. The rest of us are headin’ over there, but the doc and some of the officers are stayin’ behind. They’re gonna come over in a few months.” June would lay in the darkness, listening to the uneven rattle of Cora’s breathing. “I’m gonna wear you down, ya know. Ya gonna talk to me again before I leave. Ya ain’t got a choice. Ya can’t stay mad at me, not enough room in that little body ‘a yours for all that, Tinkerbell.” She could have sworn she heard Cora’s wheezy little giggle before the petite creature in the bed across the room shifted and pulled her blanket over her head.

_Went to the pictures. –C_

June sighed. She’d gotten her official orders that afternoon before she’d left the SSR HQ. She would be leaving early the next morning. She wanted to make things right before she left. She and Cora were back on speaking terms, but there was a certain palpable strain to their formerly easy banter and camaraderie. Maybe if the picture hadn’t started yet, Cora would let June sit next to her. Then they could go out for dinner, one last double out dancing, maybe go to Modern Marvels. Supposedly there was a man who had managed to make a flying car. Wouldn’t that be something?

“Get _off_ , ya big idiot!”

“Ow!” There was a tinkling sound like glass bottle rolling across the pavement, a clatter as the lid of a garbage can hit the ground. “What the fuck was that for?”

“You can’t possibly be that dense.”

The streets were mostly empty, most people still at work, a few shoppers here and there. The sound carried from the alley beside the theater onto the sidewalk.

“I told’ja you could take me out dancin’, not that you could take me out back! Get _off_!” It was Cora’s voice she was sure of it. The sounds of the tussle going on near the back door of the theater spurred June on, her WAC-issued heels clicking rapidly against the pavement.

“Hey!” Cora was crouched low, holding up the lid of the garbage can like a shield. Her eyes flicked up over the shoulder of the brutish guy looming over her toward June. In the moment she was distracted he knocked the lid down and walloped her across the face. “ _Hey! Jerk!”_ June grabbed his collar, using the momentum of his strike to whirl him around. “The feck’ya think yer doing?!” June hauled off and decked him. He stumbled forward, clutching his nose, and she gave him a shoe to the ass for good measure.

“Fuckin’ crazy bitch!”

June ignored him and approached to help Cora up from the ground. The knee of her slacks was torn, lip already swollen and split. “I had ‘im on the ropes.”

“Sure ya did.” She helped Cora brush off her knees and rear end before linking their arms together.

“You get your orders?” Cora raised a brow and looked June up and down.

“Yep. Sergeant June Buchanan Barnes, reporting for duty.”

Cora sighed, “You look good, Bucky.”

June couldn’t help but grin. Even if it was this late in the game, she had Cora back. “C’mon. Let’s get ya home and cleaned up. It’s my last night in town and I plan on goin’ out with a bang.”

“Where we goin’?” June pulled a folded up flier she had torn off a wall out of her jacket pocket and held it out for Cora.

“To the future.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alrighty! So, I know some of the first questions I'll probably get is why I chose the names I chose. June and Cora were both in the top 100 names for the decade in which Steve and Bucky were born according to the US Census. Cora, if I remember correctly (geeze I drafted this a long time ago!) was the same rank as Steve. I didn't want to use Stella or Estelle (which were on the census for that year as well!) because it seemed to obvious, and Stephanie wasn't even on the radar at that time. I feel like Mrs. Rogers would have been a well read woman who passed her love of books onto her child. The name was created for _Last of the Mohicans_ in the early 1800s, to my knowledge, so in my headcanon, she may have gotten the name from there since in reality neither Steve nor Cora were all that popular. As for Bucky, I didn't feel a need to change the nickname (other than Cora's occasional use of Junebug in the same way Steve affectionately calls his Bucky a jerk). If I remember correctly, James and Margaret had the same Census ranking--which would have made Bucky into a Peggy and just confused everything. So June, which has the same sort of syllabic mouth-feel as James, became my girl-Bucky.
> 
> The WAC was a real thing too! Full of kick-ass ladies. I chose to have June be attached to the SSR in order to keep her in Brooklyn while she was still technically in the army and setting the scene for Cora to make her moves. If you remember from CATFA, the SSR had that secret base/laboratory in Brooklyn. June works there and has encountered people like Erksine.
> 
> Ladies working and earning a decent living as flag-makers and engineers in Navy Yard is a real thing full of kick-ass females too. Because of this, Cora and June are slightly better off than Steve and Bucky. They live in a less rough part of town, farther from the water, in a fully outfitted apartment.
> 
> Although Disney didn't pick up _Peter Pan_ until the 1950s, the book was published in the 1910s. Again, being well-red people or people who enjoy reading (which clearly Steve does, and I think Bucky does too as he was supposed to be a good student) would have been aware of the character, Tinkerbell, and given that pre-serum girl-Steve (in this story at least) is blonde and petite and has a short temper June might call her that the same way Bucky calls Steve punk.
> 
> Enough of my rambling.
> 
> I think I'm going to continue to keep these chapters short.
> 
> As ever, thank you for reading and for the feedback.


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